From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler Quotes

“What happened was: they became a team, a family of two. There had been times before they ran away when they had acted like a team, but those were very different from feeling like a team. […] You might call it caring. You could even call it love. And it is very rarely, indeed, that it happens to two people at the same time—especially a brother and a sister who had always spent more time with activities than they had with each other. ”

“And in the course of those miles Claudia stopped regretting bringing Jamie along. In fact when they emerged from the train at Grand Central into the underworld of cement and steel that leads to the terminal, Claudia felt that having Jamie there was important. ”

“I didn’t say differently, I said different. I want to go back different. I, Claudia Kinkaid, want to be different when I go back. Like being a heroine is being different.”

“I’m not going to give you the sketch outright. I’m going to leave it to you in my will. You won’t tell my secret because if you do, I’ll write you out of my will. You will lose all that money.”

“Jamie sighed, ‘I gave him seventeen cents. So it wasn’t such a great tip. […] We’re broke. How do you feel about that, Miss Taxi Rider?’ ‘Pretty uncomfortable,’ she murmured. ‘There’s something nice and safe about having money.’ ”

“On Saturdays Claudia emptied the wastebaskets, a task she despised. There were so many of them. Everyone in her family had his own bedroom and wastebasket except her mother and father who shared both—with each other.”

“Jamie was quiet for a minute, then he said, ‘We probably have no conscience. I think we ought to be homesick. Do you think Mom and Dad raised us wrong? They’re not very mean, you know; don’t you think that should make us miss them?’ ”

“A reason that had to do with the sameness of each and every week. She was bored with simply being straight-A’s Claudia Kinkaid. She was tired of arguing about whose turn it was to choose the Sunday night seven-thirty television show, of injustice, and of the monotony of everything.”

″ ‘Well, you’ve known me for as long as I’ve known me,’ he said smiling.”

“This was all Claudia needed. Something that had been smoldering inside her since she first saw the statue, that had been fed by the Times article, now flared into an idea.”